Purledo County was home to Fort Purledo, a key element of the region’s defenses, and it was reportedly quite sturdy. Claiming it would be no easy task. Purledo County was also home to another structure called Castle Auros, situated in a position that would allow it to dispatch reinforcements to Fort Purledo in the event the latter came under attack. Castle Auros itself wasn’t all that large, but it was located on top of a hill, making it a somewhat difficult structure to assault. In short, a number of factors made laying siege to Fort Purledo a difficult prospect, but its sturdy nature made storming it by force just as questionable.
“We’ll have to start by bringing down Castle Auros,” Mireille suggested.
“Hmm. Are you sure? It might be easy for them to cut off our supply lines, considering its location, and it’s built in a hard to attack position as well. I don’t think taking it will be easy,” Rosell countered. “But then again,” he continued, “it’s true that the castle’s presence will make attacking Fort Purledo way harder…”
Rosell lapsed into thought, and Charlotte, who was in attendance but hadn’t contributed much to the discussion so far, stepped in to fill the gap. “So, hey─can’t we just use the airship you guys made the other day? Wasn’t that supposed to be a super-incredible game-changing invention, or whatever?”
“The airship…?” Rosell replied thoughtfully.
“When you put it that way, I supposed the enemy would have no way of defending themselves if we were to fly the airship above Fort Purledo and attack from above. They’d have no choice but to surrender,” said Rietz.
“I guess that’s true, isn’t it…?” Rosell agreed.
At the moment, our foes had no access to an airship of their own. That meant that we could use ours to assault their castles, and they’d have no answer for it. It was a weapon without peer, and now that it had been brought up, I was starting to think that we might be able to win this particular battle without even needing some sort of tactical masterstroke to back us up.
“The problem, of course, is that in order to do so, we’ll need to transport the airship to the vicinity of the fort,” said Maika.
“I mean…why not just fly there?” asked Rikuya. “After all, if we flew at a high enough altitude, there wouldn’t be any chance of it being shot down by the enemy.”
Maika heaved an exasperated sigh. “Brother, were you perhaps not listening to the part of the explanation where we learned that the airship has a limited range of flight? I should think that flying all the way to Fort Purledo from here would be an impossibility.”
“O-Oh. Really?”
That’s right─we’re working with a limited range.
The bulk of Purledo County was inhospitable to human habitation, so its population was small, but in terms of area it was quite large. The distance from the border to Fort Purledo was rather far as well, so I didn’t think we’d be able to fly straight there from anywhere in Canarre.
“We can just get it as close as we possibly can, then fly from there,” said Mireille. “Flying around for too long would be risky anyway, seeing as it can’t stay up in bad weather.”
There was no such thing as a quick and easy weather forecast to reference in this world, and there was no way of knowing when the weather might take a sudden turn for the worse. Purledo didn’t get much rain, but it did have the occasional day of violent winds for us to worry about. If the wind was too strong it risked capsizing the airship, so flying in uncooperative weather would be difficult, at best─and if we had to make an emergency landing, the ship and crew would be left alone in enemy territory. The airship would almost certainly be destroyed. Since we only had one of them, I didn’t want to take any risks that we could possibly avoid with it.
“Our wind-aspected aqua magia reserves are still lacking as well,” Rietz added, “and being as we’ll need to begin the invasion the moment our reinforcements arrive, there isn’t enough time for us to procure more. We should avoid situations that would require the airship to make long-distance flights as much as possible.”
Buying up a massive stockpile of wind aqua magia had been the plan, but unfortunately, we just hadn’t had enough time to follow through yet. I wasn’t sure if a long-distance flight would be possible with our current fuel stockpiles, whether or not it was necessary.
“Not to call this whole plan into question or anything, but the airship’s being modified to make it combat-ready right now, isn’t it? When’s that going to be finished?” asked Mireille. That was a factor I hadn’t considered─Shin had yet to get in touch to inform us that the modifications were complete.
“The modifications are proceeding at a rapid pace. I expect them to be finished within the month,” explained Rietz. “The Maitraw Company, meanwhile, should be arriving in Canarre by the end of the month at the absolute earliest. As such, I believe the airship’s completion and the assault’s timing should line up with one another.”
“Guess we’ll actually get to use it, then,” Mireille admitted.
“But only over short ranges,” chimed in Rosell. “Why don’t we construct a temporary fort right in between Canarre and Fort Purledo, and transport the airship there? We could use it as the staging point to send the airship on the attack.”
“A fort at the halfway point, huh?” said Mireille. “Can’t see the enemy just sitting back and letting us build one of those. We’d have a fight on our hands, no question.”
“And? We just have to win! Sure, they’ve left a decent number of troops in Fort Purledo, but with the Maitraw Company’s reinforcements on our side, we’ll have even more soldiers than they do. I don’t think they’d send their entire army out to stop us from building a fort, after all,” said Rosell.
It struck me that a temporary fort was something that we could use magic to raise. We’d need someone to direct the construction effort and tell the mages what to make where, but Canarre had plenty of people with the skills to oversee that sort of construction, Rietz included. Making that sort of fort seemed completely possible to me.
It wasn’t long at all before our strategy had solidified. We would build a fort halfway to Fort Purledo, and transport the airship there. That transportation stage would require immense caution. The enemy could send spies to sabotage our efforts, so I decided to task the Shadows with escorting the ship and ensuring it arrived undamaged.
Just in case things went catastrophically wrong and, for instance, the ship was set aflame mid-transit, we also hashed out a plan for what we would do if it was rendered inoperable. Ultimately, we decided that taking Fort Purledo first without the airship would be too difficult, and settled on targeting Castle Auros instead. We would have to take extremely great care to ensure our supply lines weren’t cut off, and dedicate more soldiers than usual to protecting them. That meant that we would have fewer troops available for the attack on Castle Auros itself, but that was something we could hopefully compensate for via our tactics.
There was, however, one worst-case scenario: if it turned out that Seitz had left more troops behind than expected, Fort Purledo was protected by a very large defense force, and our airship ended up being inoperable, it was very likely that we wouldn’t be able to claim the fort at all. Our only choice under those circumstances would be to admit defeat, fall back, and tighten up Canarre’s defenses. The worst-case scenario within a worst-case scenario would be the enemy pursuing us and taking over Canarre itself, so if things seemed to be moving in that direction, I would have to be very quick about making the judgment call to retreat. I had faith that Couran wouldn’t hold that decision against me.
After ironing out our overall strategy, it came time to decide who would be stepping into which roles. To start, I tasked Rietz with overseeing our fort’s construction. He would direct Charlotte and her unit of mages, who would handle the heavy lifting via their magic and also defend the fort from any attackers who arrived to obstruct them. I didn’t anticipate Seitz devoting a large army to that task, so I was confident Charlotte and her mages would come out on top.
The one problem was that battle breaking out would delay our fort’s completion─and there was a risk that the other nearby counties would use that time to send reinforcements Purledo’s way. We had to finish the fort as quickly and efficiently as possible if we wanted the plan to succeed.